Becki Sue and her Big Rockin' Daddies

Hey, Blues Fans.

As most of you know, Becki Sue & her Big Rockin' Daddies! participated in the 2007 International Blues Challenge on February 1-3 (representing the Washington Blues Society) at The Hard Rock Cafe, located on the infamous Beale Street in Memphis, TN.

There were 155 bands and solo acts performing in 17 clubs. Unfortunately, we were not one of the ten bands to make it to the finals, but we feel we definitely made a great impression, judging from the positive feedback that we received at the event and even more great feedback that continues to roll in since the event took place.

Recently we received in the mail the scores from our judges. This is the first we have seen the results on paper, although we spoke with some of the judges after the event was over and have wondered, since we got very positive feedback from all of the judges that we spoke with, why we didn't make the finals. Now we have a pretty good idea about "Who", but still we wonder... "Why?"

There were three judges per night for the two nights that we performed and competed with nine other bands. We were all scored in four categories: Blues Content, Talent, Originality, and Stage Presence, on a scale from 1 to 10. Here are our scores and judges comments (when given) just as they wrote them while we were playing our two shows.

Thursday, February 1st (we played 3rd)

Judge: Alan Willie (unknown affiliation)
Blues Content: 8
Talent: 9
Originality: 9
Stage Presence: 9
Comment: WOW

Judge: T-Bone Erickson (BluesWax Online E-zine Founder)
Blues Content: 9
Talent: 9
Originality: 8
Stage Presence: 10

Comments: Nice shoes! Very nice stage presence. Damn good guitar. Nice double-duty on sax and harp. Helluva lot of fun to watch and listen to. Nice original approach on guitar. Nice tag team vocals. A lot of fire on guitar. Rhythm section has massive grooves. Band is tight but swings mightily. Great ending-great stage show!

Judge: Helen Hiatt (unknown affiliation)
Blues Content: 6
Talent: 4
Originality: 3
Stage Presence: 2

Comments: Thanks for playing for us!

Friday, February 2nd (we played last)

Judge: Donald Speer (unknown affiliation)
Blues Content: 7
Talent: 8
Originality: 8
Stage presence: 9
Comment: none

Judge: Nancy Edwards (marketing & sponsorship for The Blues Festival Guide)
Blues Content: 9
Talent: 9
Originality: 9
Stage presence: 10

Comments: Wow, tight band. Guitar player is a wildman. I love it. Great energy. Great fun. Nice harmonizing. This is something that gives people a reason to go see a live performance.

Judge: Paul Averwater (Beale Street Blues Society)
Blues Content: 8
Talent: 8
Originality: 7
Stage presence: 9
Comments: none

Best regards and may the blues be with you always...

Tom "T-Boy Neal" Boyle

www.bigrockindaddies.com